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In the above post, we need to remember that forests which equal paper, are not diverse and broadly spaced stands of trees. They are plantations all of the same type and age.
This may be sustainable for paper but not for biodiversity.

Siberia is thickly polluted and if it's not the cheap oil, used for making the cheapest diesel in the world, it's the bauxite refineries or the metal mines. Why would you worry about polluting the frozen wastes? Sure nobody will see it anyway.
Well, the trees see it.

"The extent of damage done to the boreal forest, the largest land biome on Earth, can be seen in the annual growth rings of trees near Norilsk where die off has spread up to 100 kilometers. The results are reported in the journal Ecology Letters.

Norilsk, in northern Siberia, is the world's northernmost city with more than 100,000 people, and one of the most polluted places on Earth. Since the 1930s, intensive mining of the area's massive nickel, copper and palladium deposits, combined with few environmental regulations, has led to severe pollution levels. A massive oil spill in May 2020 has added to the extreme level of environmental damage in the area.

Not only are the high level of airborne emissions from the Norilsk industrial complex responsible for the direct destruction of around 24,000 square kilometers of boreal forest since the 1960s, surviving trees across much of the high-northern latitudes are suffering as well. The high pollution levels cause declining tree growth, which in turn have an effect of the amount of carbon that can be sequestered in the boreal forest.

However, while the link between pollution and forest health is well-known, it has not been able to explain the 'divergence problem' in dendrochronology, or the study of tree rings: a decoupling of tree ring width from rising air temperatures seen since the 1970s."
....

""Using the information stored in thousands of tree rings, we can see the effects of Norilsk's uncontrolled environmental disaster over the past nine decades," said Professor Ulf Büntgen from Cambridge's Department of Geography, who led the research. "While the problem of sulphur emissions and forest dieback has been successfully addressed in much of Europe, for Siberia, we haven't been able to see what the impact has been, largely due to a lack of long-term monitoring data.""
.....

"Global warming should be expected to increase the rate of boreal tree growth, but the researchers found that as the pollution levels peaked, the rate of tree growth in northern Siberia slowed. They found that the pollution levels in the atmosphere diminished the trees' ability to turn sunlight into energy through photosynthesis, and so they were not able to grow as quickly or as strong as they would in areas with lower pollution levels."



More information: Alexander V. Kidyanov et al. 'Ecological and conceptual consequences of Arctic pollution.' Ecology Letters (2020).
Journal information: Ecology Letters
Provided by University of Cambridge

Plants need soil. Soils have different compositions according to location and latitude.



"Researchers analyzed samples of 42 soils from archives of the National Ecological Observatory Network and samples taken from additional sites, representing all of the major soil types on the continent.

The soils were analyzed by William C. Hockaday, Ph.D., associate professor of geosciences at Baylor University, and visiting scientist Chenglong Ye, a postdoctoral scientist at Nanjing Agricultural University, in the Molecular Biogeochemistry Lab at Baylor. They used a technique called nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, which allowed them to analyze the chemical structure and composition of natural organic molecules in the soil.

"Soils are a foundation of society by providing food, clean water and clean air," Hockaday said. "Soils also have a major role in climate change as one of the largest reservoirs of carbon on the planet. Even so, the chemical makeup of this carbon has been debated by scientists for over 100 years."

"With this study, we wanted to address the questions of whether organic matter is chemically similar across environments or if it varies predictably across environments," said Steven Hall, Ph.D., the study's lead author and assistant professor of ecology, evolution and organismal biology at Iowa State."

Another look at soil, this time involving roots and how they sequester carbon.

""The study will have a major impact on present and future estimates of how much carbon is fixed and stored by plants, critical information for future policy decisions in the face of global environmental change," said John Schade, a program director in NSF's Division of Environmental Biology."

Yale asks whether forests plant themselves better than humans do.



"When Susan Cook-Patton was doing a post-doc in forest restoration at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Maryland seven years ago, she says she helped plant 20,000 trees along Chesapeake Bay. It was a salutary lesson. “The ones that grew best were mostly ones we didn’t plant,�� she remembers. “They just grew naturally on the ground we had set aside for planting. Lots popped up all around. It was a good reminder that nature knows what it is doing.��

What is true for Chesapeake Bay is probably true in many other places, says Cook-Patton, now at The Nature Conservancy. Sometimes, we just need to give nature room to grow back naturally. Her conclusion follows a new global study that finds the potential for natural forest regrowth to absorb atmospheric carbon and fight climate change has been seriously underestimated."

Tree planting is especially useful on marginal land to absorb rain and stop floods occurring.

"The research which was also supported by native woodland charity Moor Trees is the first to measure comparable differences in the water infiltration rates of soils, between native woodland and pasture sites, across multiple upland catchments.

Thomas Murphy, who led the research as part of his Ph.D., said:

"Many UK upland areas have a history of soil compaction and the aim of our study was to define how quickly this nature-based solution could affect that. People perhaps think that trees need to be mature in order for them to have beneficial environmental effects. But across our four test sites, we showed they can make significant improvements to soil properties within just 15 years of establishment, meaning it can be a viable option for flood prevention in a relatively modest timeframe.""



More information: Thomas R. Murphy et al. Native woodland establishment improves soil hydrological functioning in UK upland pastoral catchments, Land Degradation & Development (2020). DOI:
Provided by University of Plymouth

Magellan's beech is the world's most southerly tree, on Cape Horn.

"Standing on the southern side of that wind-battered tree means all trees in the world are to your north, with nothing behind you but some grasses, ocean and Antarctica. Isla Hornos, also known as Cape Horn, supports a small population of Nothofagus betuloides �� the Magellan's beech or coigüe. Wind is omnipresent. Cape Horn is one of the windiest places on the planet, and during the expedition, our team faced hurricane-force winds of 75 mph for days at a time.

This wind appears to be the main constraint for arboreal life on the island—trees are found only in sheltered locations behind cliffs and hills. While the area hasn't warmed dramatically, climate change is intensifying the westerly winds that rake the region. Evidence from the nearby Falkland Islands also indicates that the wind direction is shifting too. Because of this, forests on Cape Horn that were previously growing in sheltered areas are now exposed to wind. We found long stretches of dead trees along the edges of the small forests, suggesting that shifting winds caused by climate change may be killing off trees even as new sheltered areas emerge."

"Together with National Geographic, ESRI and iNaturalist, on Sept. 26, I launched an interactive exploration challenge called The Edges of (All) Life exploration project. Anybody can look up the edges of species ranges in their own neighborhood and go searching for an individual that will push those boundaries out farther.
I may have found the world's southernmost tree, but you could find the northernmost dogwood, the northernmost Douglas fir or the southernmost maidenhair fern. No matter where you live, there is likely a unique edge nearby, and finding these ranges is critically important for the conservation of that particular species."


Study: Populations of widely spread tree species respond differently to climate change
Provided by The Conversation
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

As forest canopy trees die back from disease and heat, the forest floor will open up, and plants best able to exploit nitrogen and light may take over, reducing biodiversity on the floor.

Upsetting news as a mature native forest is cleared to make way for a high speed rail that nobody seems to want.

"HS2's phase one ecology lead Kat Stanhope said: "Our aim is for HS2 to be the most sustainable railway in the world, and it will make a major contribution to helping Britain fight climate change and reach its net zero carbon targets by 2050.

"But even before HS2 starts operating, there are countless environmental projects and innovations occurring up and down the route to protect, preserve and enhance Britain's precious natural environment."

Both Little Lyntus and Fulfen woods are privately-owned and contain ancient coppiced trees.

Almost all of Little Lyntus has been cut down (1.4ha of 1.43ha) and nearly half of Fulfen Wood. (0.4ha of 1ha).

It comes after the felling of the 300-year-old Hunningham Oak near Leamington Spa last week, which was cut down to make way for a service road.
A last-minute plea has also been made to save a 250-year-old pear tree in nearby Cubbington, voted England's tree of the year in 2015, which is also set to be felled for HS2.

HS2 Ltd estimates that a total of 29.4ha of woodland across 32 ancient woodlands will be affected by phase one of the line."



Fiction about ancient woodland in England:
Mythago Wood

Legumes are plants like beans and peas. Planting some in among rubber plants has many advantages.

"rubber-leguminous shrub systems significantly improved soil organic carbon sequestration rate and reduced greenhouse gas emissions, relative to the same-aged rubber plantations."

"This is arguably the most significant finding to date from the project: That policy makers interested in reducing the carbon footprints of cities need to pay attention to CO2 emissions and removals from urban green spaces, not just fossil fuel emissions," said study co-author Duren, a research scientist with UArizona Research, Innovation and Impact who began the research while at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "We were surprised to see the magnitude of the urban biosphere source and sink in a heavily urbanized landscape like L.A.. Basically, lawns and parks and irrigation matter."

Laser scanning of large trees. This helps estimate biomass.

"The trees scanned include the 88-metre tall Colonel Armstrong tree, with a diameter-at-breast height of 3.39 m, which they estimate weighs around 110 tons, the equivalent of almost 10 double-decker buses."

Deforestation means individual trees and clumps too.

"Tucker and his NASA colleagues, together with an international team, used commercial satellite images from DigitalGlobe, which were high-resolution enough to spot individual trees and measure their crown size.
The images came from the commercial QuickBird-2, GeoEye-1, WorldView-2, and WorldView-3 satellites. The team focused on the dryland regions—areas that receive less precipitation than what evaporates from plants each year—including the arid south side of the Sahara Desert, that stretches through the semi-arid Sahel Zone and into the humid sub-tropics of West Africa.
By studying a variety of landscapes from few trees to nearly forested conditions, the team trained their computing algorithms to recognize trees across diverse terrain types, from deserts in the north to tree savannas in the south."

Secondary forest growth is seldom protected but provides many useful services, including water retention, biodiversity protecting, soil protection and carbon absorption.

Calculating reforestation benefits with Big Data.


"Their research, which blends remote sensing, field work and machine learning, offers the most up-to-date estimates of carbon capture potential in reclusive North Korea and details the benefits of reforestation efforts over the last two decades in China and South Korea.

"Because there is historically scant data from North Korea, people know little about how much carbon is stored in this region," said Liang, whose findings were published in the journal Global Change Biology. "Based on the data we can collect from northeast China and South Korea, we used machine learning and big data analysis to estimate how much carbon is stored across the entire region. We mapped for the first time with accuracy the spatial trend of carbon storage in that region of the world.""

More information: Weixue Luo et al. New forest biomass carbon stock estimates in Northeast Asia based on multisource data, Global Change Biology (2020). DOI:
Journal information: Global Change Biology
Provided by Purdue University

""Ghost forests are a surprising indicator of ecological resilience in coastal systems," Kirwan says. "They mark how marshes naturally migrate in response to sea-level rise."

But that migration comes at a cost.

"Places that people have lived for hundreds of years are becoming too wet and too salty to grow crops on, in some cases," Kirwan says. "And of course, the forest resources are being lost. And in some cases, people are forced to move from their homes as the land becomes too flooded."

So ghost forests have become eerie symbols of rapid change."

Study of how trees across central Europe coped with the dry 2018 summer; some of them not well. The study measured the soil and altitude conditions and species factors.


More information: Philipp Brun et al. Large‐scale early‐wilting response of Central European forests to the 2018 extreme drought, Global Change Biology (2020). DOI:
Journal information: Global Change Biology
Provided by Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL

Major trees were 3% of the total number of trees on the studied plots, but they stored 42% of the total above-ground carbon within the forests.
Major trees also offer more diversity of microhabitat, so a wider range of birdlife can be supported.


More information: Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, DOI: , ��
Provided by Frontiers

Eating more food grown on tropical trees. I've supported tree planting which provides trees with edible fruit or nuts to villages in Africa. This helps with variety and food security.

""Planting the right type of trees in the right place can provide nutritious foods to improve diets sustainably while providing other valuable ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration," said Merel Jansen, the lead author from ETH Zurich and the Center of International Forestry Research. "It also can contribute to development issues related to poverty reduction, biodiversity conservation and food security."

In spite of the diversity of edible plants—there are more than 7,000—the global food system is founded on extraordinarily low diversity. Almost half the calories consumed by humans come from only four crops: wheat, rice, sugarcane and maize.

...
"The world's hundreds of millions of smallholder farmers, who have been often pushed aside by the industrialization of food systems, have the potential to be key players in food system transformation. With the right incentives, investments and involvement, smallholder farms could scale up agroforestry systems to produce more, healthy food, while simultaneously diversifying their income sources.

Marginalized groups and women also stand to gain from tree-sourced food sources, especially when the foods are harvested from trees that are not planted but grow spontaneously or and have the potential for natural regeneration that can be managed. This is because, in part, women farmers tend to have limited access to land, credit and other assets."

This is an excellent article which looks at what needs to be in place, such as land security and quality cropper seeds, and supply chain development for surplus fruits and nuts. Examples given are Brazil nuts, mangoes, avocadoes and other local produce.


More information: Merel Jansen et al, Food for thought: The underutilized potential of tropical tree‐sourced foods for 21st century sustainable food systems, People and Nature (2020). DOI:
Provided by International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT)

Trees support woodpeckers - if the trees are large enough.

Lovely to see the work to restore red cockaded woodpeckers has paid off, and this site is now sending young birds to new colonies.

"The first of what would become six recruitment clusters, with four trees each supporting artificial cavities, would be created to receive translocated birds. During the fall of 2001, researchers from CCB traveled to Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge, caught two hatch-year females and one hatch-year male, and moved them to artificial cavities within Piney Grove. Over the next four years, CCB researchers moved an additional 22 birds into Piney Grove Preserve.

Intensive habitat management and the addition of new birds bent the curve and turned the population around. The initial management goal for Piney Grove was ten breeding groups. By 2017, the site supported 13 breeding groups including 56 adults."


Provided by The College of William & Mary

Mangrove trees are in danger in some coastal locations. But mangroves protect the coast.

"The research, conducted by an international team of experts including Dr. Barend van Maanen from the University of Exeter, identifies not only how these coastal forests get pushed against their shores, but also what causes the loss of their diversity.

It shows the negative effects of river dams that decrease the supply of mud that could otherwise raise mangrove soils, while buildings and seawalls largely occupy the space that mangroves require for survival.

The study is published in Environmental Research Letters.

Coastal mangrove forests are valuable, highly biodiverse ecosystems that protect coastal communities against storms.

Mangroves withstand flooding by tides and capture mud to raise their soils. But as the mangrove trees cannot survive if they are under water for too long, the combination of sea-level rise and decreasing mud supply from rivers poses a serious threat."



Journal information: Environmental Research Letters
Provided by University of Exeter

If anyone is on Linked In, I recommend following a gentleman called Duncan Slater PhD. He regularly shares tree photos and advice. He has recently posted this item with photos of dead ash trees among otherwise thriving woodland.

"IT PIERCES THE HEART!

Over the summer, I took the children out often, to walk and play in parks and woodlands locally.

When ash dieback disease (Hymenoscyphus fraxineus) was first noticeable in Lancashire, it was the saplings and semi-mature trees that showed the worst signs of it: now it is much more deeply affecting the landscape.

We got to see many large, mature, elegant, beautiful ash trees, like the ones pictured, in our local woodlands - as just carcasses - stone cold dead.

It pierced my heart.

Each tree was a generous, living entity - now gone - each a victim of our ill-conceived manipulation of the planet's resources. And many millions will be lost in this way.

Not only must we plant many trees to address this loss - we should invest in our plant biosecurity and plant pathology sectors so that we have a better chance of preventing the next tree-related pest or disease disaster."

"Tree survival and growth responses in the aftermath of a strong earthquake"

"Abstract
The infrequent and unpredictable nature of earthquakes means that their landslide‐generated impacts on forests are rarely investigated. In montane forests, landslides are the main cause of tree death and injury during earthquakes. Landslides range from soil movements that uproot and bury trees over extensive areas to rock falls that strike individual trees. We examined unexplored relationships between tree survival and distance from an epicentre, soil‐available phosphorus (P) as an indicator of soil development and tree diameter. We expected decreased tree growth in damaged forests because of tree injury.

We used a plot network, established in 1974 and resurveyed regularly ever since, to quantify survival and growth responses 6��30 km from the epicentre of a 1994 earthquake in New Zealand's Southern Alps. Our Bayesian analysis used 8,518 trees from 250 plots that representatively sampled a naturally monospecific Nothofagus forest. As the time‐scales over which responses could emerge were unknown, we compared relationships for a pre‐earthquake period with 0��5 years post‐earthquake, and with 5+ years post‐earthquake.

Not all plots were affected by the earthquake. We found that 0��5 years post‐earthquake survival increased logarithmically with distance from the epicentre with lowered survival up to 20 km from the epicentre. Survival was low on plots with high soil‐available P. An inverted U‐shaped relationship between survival and diameter pre‐earthquake was not found 0��5 years post‐earthquake. This was because of surprisingly high survival by large trees. The earthquake most often suppressed 0��5 years post‐earthquake growth up to 15 km from the epicentre, but this was only apparent after accounting for more general growth differences among periods. The positive relationship between growth and soil‐available P pre‐earthquake and 5+ years post‐earthquake reflected enhanced growth on young soils. This contrasted with a negative effect of soil‐available P on growth 0��5 years post‐earthquake.

Synthesis. Soil‐available P, tree diameter and distance from the epicentre independently determined how tree survival and growth responded to an earthquake. The impacts on survival and growth largely occurred 0��5 years post‐earthquake and suggests a level of resilience in mountain beech forests."

Study of Tree rings or dendrochronology has revealed that old trees in inner / east Asia never saw droughts like these. The continent is heading for irreversible heating and drying.

"Coauthor Jin-Ho Yoon, of the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea, noted that the hundreds of years of tree-ring data make it clear that the confluence of increased summer heatwaves and severe droughts are unique in the context of the past 260 years. Coauthor Hans Linderholm, from the University of Gothenburg, said the trees used in the analysis appear to "feel" the heatwaves throughout their lifetimes.

"The conifer trees respond strongly to anomalously high temperatures," Linderholm said. "By examining their growth rings, we can see their response to the recent heatwaves, and we can see that they do not appear to have experienced anything like this in their very long lives."

Tree rings examined in the study were mainly collected from the Mongolian Plateau, which suggests that the increasing heat is affecting plants even at high elevations."



More information: P. Zhang el al., "Abrupt shift to hotter and drier climate over inner East Asia beyond the tipping point," Science (2020). �� 1126/science.abb3368
Q.-B. Zhang at Tibet Agricultural and Animal Husbandry University in Xizang, China el al., "Tree rings circle an abrupt shift in climate," Science (2020). �� 1126/science.abf1700

Journal information: Science
Provided by Utah State University

A new finding that a tree is limited in how much carbon it can store each year... longer growing seasons or more carbon in the air will not improve carbon capture.
The solution would seem to be to plant more trees than we are. Quickly.

"This research shows that deciduous trees can only absorb a set amount of carbon each year and once that limit is reached, no more can be absorbed. At that point, leaves begin to change colour.
This limit is set by the availability of nutrients, particularly nitrogen, and the physical structure of the plant itself, particularly the inner vessels which move water and dissolved nutrients around. Nitrogen is a key nutrient which plants need in order to grow, and it's often the amount of available nitrogen that limits total growth. This is why farmers and gardeners use nitrogen fertilisers, to overcome this limitation.

Together, these constraints mean that carbon uptake during the growing season is a self-regulating mechanism in trees and herbaceous plants. Only so much carbon can be taken up.

In a world with increasing levels of carbon in the atmosphere, these new findings imply that warmer weather and longer growing seasons will not allow temperate deciduous trees to take up more carbon dioxide. The study's predictive model suggests that by 2100, when tree growing seasons are expected to be between 22 and 34 days longer, leaves will fall from trees between three and six days earlier than they do now.

This has significant implications for climate change modelling. If we accept that the amount of carbon taken up by deciduous trees in temperature countries like the UK will remain the same each year regardless of the growing season, carbon dioxide levels will rise more quickly than was previously expected. The only way to change this will be to increase the capacity of trees to absorb carbon.

Plants that aren't limited by the amount of nitrogen available may be able to grow for longer in the warming climate. These are the trees which can take nitrogen from the air, such as alder. But these species will still lose their leaves at roughly the same time as always, thanks to less daylight and colder temperatures."



More information: Deborah Zani et al. Increased growing-season productivity drives earlier autumn leaf senescence in temperate trees, Science (2020). DOI:
Christine R. Rollinson. Surplus and stress control autumn timing, Science (2020). DOI: ,

Journal information: Science
Provided by The Conversation
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This post would gladden one's heart.

"Until now, we have managed these areas primarily for commercial purposes. But because of their popularity and proximity to the city, it’s time to put people’s needs much higher up the agenda.

Through the Dublin Mountains Makeover, an area of over 900 hectares across nine Coillte forests will transition away from the clearfell and replanting cycle towards a different model. Multi-generational forests managed under ‘Continuous Cover Forestry�� (CCF) principles will maintain their green canopy on a permanent basis, and in areas where this isn’t possible, non-native Sitka spruce and lodgepole pine trees will be removed and replanted with native species such as Scots pine, birch, rowan, oak, holly and willow to provide habitat for nature and bring autumn colours to the hills.

Work will start on the Dublin Mountains Makeover in June 2020 and will continue for many years, possibly decades."

Coillte are restoring the western Irish peatland to a more native aspect with careful planting.

" Funding was recently announced for a major project on Ireland's western seaboard. The Wild Western Peatlands project will see Coillte Nature restore and rehabilitate approximately 2,100 hectares of Atlantic blanket bog that is currently planted with commercial spruce and pine forests.

Our aim is to take an ecological approach to restoring and rehabilitating these sensitive landscapes. We’ll do this by rewetting bogs as much as possible and establishing pioneer native woodlands on edges and slopes where rewetting isn’t possible. These sparse pioneer woodlands will feature hardy species like birch and Scots pine that are native, of Irish provenance and ecologically appropriate for such exposed sites.

Welcoming the announcement, Coillte Nature Director, Dr Ciarán Fallon, said:

“This area was planted at a time when the importance of peatlands for carbon and biodiversity was not well understood. This funding allows us to create real impact and restore a rare habitat of international importance. The learnings can be applied to develop a range of solutions for restoring our western peatlands��."

Bord na Mona and Coillte are working together on restoring cutaway bogs to native tree planting on the edges of growing bogs. Win-win.

"As Bord na Móna undertakes the process of rewetting much of its exhausted land bank, some of the areas unsuitable for rewetting have been identified as potential sites for native woodland.

WHAT WE’RE DOING
Coillte Nature and Bord na Móna are working together on an area of 338 hectares at the Littleton Bog Complex on the border of Co. Kilkenny and Co. Tipperary. By mimicking natural processes, we hope to speed up native woodland development on cutaway peatlands.

Native woodlands comprise one aspect of the rehabilitation strategy, the overarching objective of which is to re-wet cutaway bogs wherever possible. Sites deemed suitable for native woodland development as part of this project are unsuitable for re-wetting (e.g. mounds, ridges, steep slopes and other raised areas that lie above the flood zone)."

Highly interesting look at a site under the restoration process in the west of Ireland.

"1. Alluvial woodland

This wet woodland, located opposite the entrance to Hazelwood and beside the Garvoge river, is one of the rarest types of woodland in Ireland and as such it is an extremely important area for biodiversity, providing a home for many specialist water-loving plants and wildlife. These habitats are also under increasing threat in Europe, which is why this area is classified Annex 1 Priority Habitat under the EU Habitats Directive.
....

"3. Commercial plantations

Coillte manages a small 4.3 hectare area of commercial forestry in an area beside the alluvial woodland. The area was clearfelled in 2018 and was due to be replanted with Sitka spruce. However, as it is relatively small and adjoins a large area of high-quality alluvial woodland, we decided to manage the clearfell within the context of the overall conservation management strategy for Hazelwood.

Coillte Nature replanted this area in 2020 with native woodlands with a species mix that mimics the adjacent alluvial woodland community. It will comprise alder, grey willow, downy birch, Scots pine, holly, hazel and guelder rose."

"In Big Basin Redwoods State Park, 97 percent of the 4,400 acres of old-growth forest burned. In Mojave National Preserve, a single fire wiped out an estimated 1.3 million Joshua trees (which are really yucca, a perennial shrub). In the Sierra Nevada, the 2020 fires burned one-third of the remaining habitat of giant sequoias, killing hundreds, maybe thousands, of ancient trees in a relative instant.

“They are literally irreplaceable,�� said Kristen Shive, a forest ecologist, “unless you have 2,000 years to wait.��

The ranges of these species do not overlap; they live in vastly different ecosystems, sometimes separated by hundreds of miles. That is what made 2020 so stunning. Like never before, at least in modern times, has fire done so much destruction to each of these species, and it did it all in one year."

"Despite conceptions that the Sahara Desert is a desolate wasteland, in fact it is home to 1.8 billion trees.
Researchers discovered this by utilizing satellite imagery from NASA, and deep learning.
This is the first time that anyone counted trees across a large dryland region.
There are far more trees in the West African Sahara Desert than you might expect, according to a study that combined artificial intelligence and detailed satellite imagery.

Researchers counted over 1.8 billion trees and shrubs in the 1.3 million square kilometer (501,933 square miles) area that covers the western-most portion of the Sahara Desert, the Sahel, and what are known as sub-humid zones of West Africa.

...
"New knowledge about trees in dryland areas like this is important for several reasons, Brandt says. For example, they represent an unknown factor when it comes to the global carbon budget.

“Trees outside of forested areas are usually not included in climate models, and we know very little about their carbon stocks. They are basically a white spot on maps and an unknown component in the global carbon cycle,�� he says.

Furthermore, the new study contributes to better understanding of the importance of trees for biodiversity and ecosystems and for the people living in these areas. In particular, enhanced knowledge about trees is also important for developing programs that promote agroforestry, which plays a major environmental and socioeconomic role in arid regions.

“Thus, we are also interested in using satellites to determine tree species, as tree types are significant in relation to their value to local populations who use wood resources as part of their livelihoods,�� says Rasmus Fensholt, professor in the geosciences and natural resource management department.

“Trees and their fruit are consumed by both livestock and humans, and when preserved in the fields, trees have a positive effect on crop yields because they improve the balance of water and nutrients.��
..
"Researchers from the University of Copenhagen’s computer science department developed the deep learning algorithm that made the counting of trees over such a large area possible.

The researchers fed the deep learning model thousands of images of various trees to show it what a tree looks like. Then, based on the recognition of tree shapes, the model could automatically identify and map trees over large areas and thousands of images. The model needs only hours what would take thousands of humans several years to achieve."

"In October 2020, a healthy 150-year-old plane tree in Hackney facing removal was voted the Woodland Trust’s tree of the year by the public, but two months later the tree is now due to be felled as part of local redevelopment plans, and any protesters who attempt to halt the destruction can be jailed for two years, according to a High Court order.

The plight of the Happy Man Tree, as it is known due to its proximity to a former pub called the Happy Man, inspired an outpouring of love from those who live nearby, who have dressed the tree with garlands and hung signs and banners up drawing attention to the plans to chop it down.

The tree is being removed as part of a housing redevelopment project, which will provide social housing, but the developer - Berkeley Homes - admitted earlier this year that had they known how much the tree was valued they would have drawn up different plans which could have kept it. Though they said it was too late to do so.
...

"But this week it appears Berkeley Homes are now on course to remove the tree as planned and fearing a backlash, have obtained an order by the High Court which states that anyone who peacefully stands under the tree after 9am on December 13 could face a prison sentence of up to two years and may have their assets seized."

This heartening story of tree planting comes from the west of Ireland.

"100 of the trees are the native 'Pinus sylvestris' and the other 300 are companion species.

Pinus sylvestris was thought to have died out in Ireland over 1,500 years ago but recent investigations by scientists at Trinity College Dublin found that an isolated population of native pine trees survived at a remote site in the Burren.

These native trees appear to have maintained their continuity in the area over the last 2,000 years and are genetically distinct from the introduced 'Scots pine' trees.

"We were able to collect seeds from that pine and grow them in a nursey not far from here," Mr Dunford said.

"Three years later, we’ve got these beautiful saplings which are ready to plant."

"It’s a lovely ecological restoration project," he added.

Getting into the outdoors to plant the trees with his family was "fantastic" he said, as they are "all sick of doing everything online and Zoom meetings".

"Hopefully over the years we’ll be able to watch them grow, thrive and prosper in the Burren," he said. "

Climate change means more forest fires and this will give less protection from avalanches.



"In 2018, a fire destroyed six hectares of trees in Les Voëttes, a forested slope in the Diablerets mountain range in Vaud Canton. Gaume and Xingyue Li, a postdoctoral researcher at SLAB, were keen to learn more about whether and how the damage might have affected the forest's ability to protect against avalanches in the winter. So they asked two Master's students in environmental engineering to examine the case for their Design Project, working directly with Vaud Canton's Environment Department (DGE).

Mapping avalanche risk

Using a digital model developed at SLAB, the students produced a new avalanche risk map to inform the DGE's reforestation strategy. They found that, although future avalanches will move faster down the slope at Les Voëttes, the relatively shallow gradient will stop them from reaching the houses below. The expanded avalanche risk zone only includes one extra chalet that was previously outside the boundary.

The students made two recommendations for the DGE: to plant dense clusters of trees in highly localized spots in order to improve stability, and to employ random planting patterns across the rest of the forest to provide enhanced protection. "Smaller, non-hazardous avalanches play a key role in supporting biodiversity," says Francesc Molné, one of the two Master's students who worked on the Design Project. "In ecosystems like these, plants and wildlife are adapted to these types of event, so it's important that they continue.""

Yosemite has lost two giant sequoias in a massive storm.

NASA helps us know how forests contribute to the carbon budget.



"Using ground, airborne, and satellite data, a diverse team of international researchers �� including NASA scientists �� has created a new method to assess how the changes in forests over the past two decades have impacted carbon concentrations in the atmosphere.

In addition to better understanding the overall role of forests in the global carbon cycle, the scientists were also able to distinguish between the contributions of various forest types, confirming that among forests, tropical forests are those responsible for the largest component of global carbon fluctuations �� both absorbing more carbon than other forest types, and releasing more carbon into the atmosphere due to deforestation and degradation."

Open data portal on forest cover.



Paper in Nature.

Urban trees bring many benefits, but this study explains that mature, major trees are worth more to biodiversity and other ecosystem services than saplings.

The Happy Man tree mentioned above has been felled.

The trunk of a New Zealand tree, preserved for thousands of years, was uncovered just a couple of years ago, and has already rewritten our understanding of life, the universe and everything.



""The kauri trees are like the Rosetta Stone, helping us tie together records of environmental change in caves, ice cores and peat bogs around the world," says co-lead Professor Alan Cooper, Honorary Researcher at the South Australian Museum.

The researchers compared the newly-created timescale with records from sites across the Pacific and used it in global climate modelling, finding that the growth of ice sheets and glaciers over North America and large shifts in major wind belts and tropical storm systems could be traced back to the Adams Event.

One of their first clues was that megafauna across mainland Australia and Tasmania went through simultaneous extinctions 42,000 years ago.

"This had never seemed right, because it was long after Aboriginal people arrived, but around the same time that the Australian environment shifted to the current arid state," says Prof. Cooper.

The paper suggests that the Adams Event could explain a lot of other evolutionary mysteries, like the extinction of Neandertals and the sudden widespread appearance of figurative art in caves around the world.

"It's the most surprising and important discovery I've ever been involved in," says Prof. Cooper."

...
"Usually confined to the polar northern and southern parts of the globe, the colourful sights would have been widespread during the breakdown of Earth's magnetic field.

"Early humans around the world would have seen amazing auroras, shimmering veils and sheets across the sky," says Prof. Cooper.

Ionised air—which is a great conductor for electricity—would have also increased the frequency of electrical storms.

"It must have seemed like the end of days," says Prof. Cooper.

The researchers theorise that the dramatic environmental changes may have caused early humans to seek more shelter. This could explain the sudden appearance of cave art around the world roughly 42,000 years ago."

More information: A. Cooper at South Australian Museum in Adelaide, SA, Australia el al., "A global environmental crisis 42,000 years ago," Science (2021). �� 1126/science.abb8677
Journal information: Science
Provided by University of New South Wales

"To address this problem, he devised new statistical software that allowed him to synthesize decades of raw data on size, growth, canopy spread, and access to resources for nearly 100,000 individual trees at long-term research sites and experimental forests across North America. The unfiltered raw data revealed what previous meta-analyses based on averaged measurements had missed: At the continental scale, fecundity increases as a tree grows larger, up to a point. And then it begins to decline.

"This explains the East-West divide. Most trees in the East are young, growing fast and entering a size class where fecundity increases, so any indirect impact from climate that spurs their growth also increases their seed production," Clark said. "We see the opposite happening with the older, larger trees in the West. There are small and large trees in both regions, of course, but the regions differ enough in their size structure to respond in different ways."



More information: "Continent-wide Tree Fecundity Driven by Indirect Climate Effects," Nature Communications (2021). DOI:
Journal information: Nature Communications
Provided by Duke University School of Nursing

"In a review that we conducted with colleagues in 2019, we found that overall, U.S. state and federal reporting underestimated wood product-related carbon dioxide emissions by 25% to 55%. We analyzed Oregon carbon emissions from wood that had been harvested over the past century and discovered that 65% of the original carbon returned to the atmosphere as CO2. Landfills retained 16%, while just 19% remained in wood products.

In contrast, protecting high carbon-density western U.S. forests that have low vulnerability to mortality from drought or fire would sequester the equivalent of about six years of fossil fuel emissions from the entire western U.S., from the Rocky Mountain states to the Pacific coast.

Focus on Big Trees
In a recently published analysis of carbon storage in six national forests in Oregon, we showed why a strategic forest carbon reserve program should focus on mature and old forests. Big trees, with trunks more than 21 inches in diameter, make up just 3% of these forests but store 42% of the above-ground carbon. Globally, a 2018 study found that the largest-diameter 1% of trees hold half of all the carbon stored in the world's forests.

Findings like these are spurring interest in the idea of proforestation �� keeping existing forests intact and letting them grow to their full potential. Advocates see proforestation as an effective, immediate and low-cost strategy to store carbon. Older forests are more resilient to climate change than young tree plantations, which are more susceptible to drought and severe wildfires. Like the 2,000-year-old redwoods in California that have survived recent wildfires, many tree species in old forests have lived through past climate extremes.

Creating forest carbon reserves would also conserve critical habitat for many types of wildlife that are threatened by human activities. Connecting these reserves to other parks and refuges could help species that need to migrate in response to climate change."

The Nature of Oaks: The Rich Ecology of Our Most Essential Native Trees


From the oaks in his backyard to the many species of oaks in North America, the author tells us of the myriad of insect species these trees support - and from the insects the birdlife is supported.

Notre Dame.

"President Emmanuel Macron announced last summer that the 96-metre (315ft) spire would be reconstructed as originally designed by Eugene Viollet-le-Duc in the 19th century, launching the hunt for the 1,000 oaks required to build the spire and the frame of the cathedral's transept.

"It's exceptional," said forestry worker Aymeric Albert of the sawn trunk of one-rod-straight 200-year-old oak. "It's perfectly straight and without any internal defects."

The trunk was large enough for an 18-metre long beam that will help support the weight of the spire, he said. "

Legume trees (those with seed pods like bean pods) can thrive on poor mineral tropical soil, and help provide nutrients to the forest.


More information: Dimitar Z. Epihov el al., "Legume–microbiome interactions unlock mineral nutrients in regrowing tropical forests," PNAS (2021).
Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Provided by University of Sheffield

Free downloadable book about Pines in Scotland. While the landscape was largely deforested, islands on lakes were left and these have been showing how a rewilding community of plants and animals can be created.

"The UK’s native woodlands are reaching a crisis point, with just 7% in good condition, according to the first comprehensive assessment of their health.

The Woodland Trust’s report found the woods facing a barrage of threats, including destruction by development, imported pests and diseases, the impacts of the climate crisis and pollution. Woodland specialist birds and butterflies have declined by almost half since 1970, it said.

The report said the high-profile drive to create new woodlands is important, but would count for little if existing woods are lost. In any case, the report said, rates of tree planting are nowhere near what is needed and less than half of the new trees are native species.

Trees should play an important role in helping the UK tackle the climate emergency and restore wildlife in one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. They can also provide services such as reduced flooding and shade, as well as being important for many people’s wellbeing."

New research and new tools; new findings about trees, methane and methane-eating bacteria.



"In some cases, treethane emissions are significant. For example, the tropical Amazon basin is the world largest natural source of methane. Trees account for around 50% of its methane emissions.

Likewise, research from 2020 found low-lying subtropical Melaleuca forests in Australia emit methane at similar rates to trees in the Amazon.

Dead trees can emit methane, too. At the site of a catastrophic climate-related mangrove forest dieback in the Gulf of Carpentaria, dead mangrove trees were discovered to emit eight times more methane than living ones. This poses new questions for how climate change may induce positive feedbacks, triggering potent greenhouse gas release from dead and dying trees.
...
"We discovered the bark of paperbark trees provide a unique home for methane-oxidizing bacteria �� bacteria that “consumes�� methane and turns it into carbon dioxide, a far less potent greenhouse gas.

Remarkably, these bacteria made up to 25% of total microbial communities living in the bark, and were consuming around 36% of the tree’s methane. It appears these microbes make an easy living in the dark, moist and methane-rich environments."

A new platform to sell forests on line.



"Enda Keane founded Treemetrics with Garret Mullooly 17 years ago. Treemetrics is a forestry software company.

"It's been a long journey of learnings and evolution, rolling with the lessons and ever evolving technology," Keane says.

"Our technology is improving nearly every month now, so you constantly have to evolve and move with the times and move with the technology."

"We are all about measuring trees - measuring and quantifying the contents of a forest and helping the forest owners to better manage the resource," he says.
...
"Keane’s concern is that many farmers have been growing their forests as a sideline for around 30 years and now have no idea how valuable a crop they have grown.

Treemetrics followed the success of MartEye, the live online market platform for livestock, machinery, and land sales.

The two companies have put their expertise together and formed an online marketplace for forests, to be sold by auction. Forestbidder.com launches its first auction on 28th May where they have seven lots of Irish forestry to be sold to the highest bidders."

Leaf wax in sediments from the distant past of Greenland, show that spruce trees once lived in the south of the island during a warmer period.

Manging veteran oak trees for biodiversity.

"As soon as hollows develop, parakeets, owls, nuthatches, bats and other wildlife compete for them. The fact we put up so many bird-boxes is a reminder that cavities �� which are natural nesting sites �� are missing from our landscape.

Don’t think of dead wood as bad or dangerous �� all that deadness has a lot of life in it
Steven Falk, naturalist
As well as natural structures within veteran trees, the dead wood itself is full of life. There can be 280 invertebrates in one large handful of rotten wood inside a tree. Richmond Park has more than 1,000 species of beetle, many of which rely on dead wood, including the nationally rare cardinal click beetle and stag beetle.

However, across the country, dead wood is still being cleared away as people try to make woods “tidy��, or because it’s “dead�� and unsightly. In wild, natural woodland a quarter of wood is dead, but in most managed woodlands this is less than 10%, according to the Wildlife Trusts."